Due to a decided lack of blogging inspiration, I 'm going to share some dresses on my summer lust list. I've recently started to get into dresses because they are so easy. No worrying over coordinating tops and bottoms, just pull one item of clothing and you're done. It's amazing how reaching a particular age can have a liberating effect on one's clothing choices. When I was younger I was so self-conscious- either I was too fat, too short, too shy for a lot of trendy stuff. My mom had to stuff me into leggings the last time they were in style and I actually had the legs to pull them off. I whined the entire day that I had to wear them and never touched them again. Now I have pairs in a wide range of colors and dont worry over much if they suit me or not. The mantra now is to wear what pleases me. Alright, enough of the gyaan, let's look at some pretty clothes.

This dress represents love at first sight. It's the Native American/ Ikat style fabric which has my heart beating pitter-pat. Plus, the silhouette really works well with my figure. The cons- strapless and cotton which no doubt will fade spectacularly. The fading bit is what's keeping me from actually buying it RIGHT AWAY.

As you can see I have an all-abiding love for shirt-dresses. If I had to pick just one it would be the middle dress with my favorite dots, stripes and the vivid lime-green sash. I love everything about it, the contrasting colors, the shape, the length. And so perfect for summer! Just looking at it makes me feel cool and elegant. I'm in love with the other two because of their prints - frogs on the first and a bicycle on the third. So quirky and adorable!! Can a girl have too many shirt-dresses??

And finally the summeriest of them all. I've been in love with this dress ever since I spotted it in a catalog. And it has pockets too, whee!! But, the shapelessness leads me to think it'll look like a gunny sack, albeit a cool one, on me. Decisions, decisions!!

On an unrelated note I just finished reading 'A Conspiracy of Kings', the fourth in Megan Whalen Turner's 'The Queen's Thief' series, reviewed here. What a fabulous book this one is! It's the story of Sophos, the heir of the king of Sounis, referred to as Useless the Younger in the first book. Sophos is kidnapped in the middle of the second book. Sophos is so sweet, unsophisticated and unsure of himself, all the things which Gen isnt. While I was disappointed that it didnt have enough of Gen, Sophos's story is a true coming of age and a very nice entry to the series. As a bonus, the publisher's have the first few chapters of 'The Thief' available for reading for a short period of time. Browse it here. For the record, 'The King of Attolia' is still my favorite in the series :)

Ever since I was little I've been crazy about polka dots. As part of my adoration, I had a dotted play tea set, dotted hair clips, hair bands and ribbons and if an article of clothing had dots on it, I was almost guaranteed to crave it.

It lead to a lot of fashion transgressions in my teens, one which is particularly memorable. Namely a pair of white pants, high-waisted with pleats in the front, ruffles on the elastic waistband with .... orange polka dots all over and a matching polka-dotted fabric belt!!!!

Close your eyes and imagine that for a minute. While everyone collectively shudders at the insane number of fashion blunders in that single sentence, let me assure you those pants looked as bad as they sound. I looked like a diseased white elephant but I wore them with great fondness for a very long time. When I bought them the thinking was that the ruffles were like icing on cake, ummm yes, I loved ruffles too.

A lot of times I look at old pictures and have to scold my mom for letting me out and about looking like a short, plump mess. She did try her best though, so for a long time after the dotted disaster above I was convinced that dots were too young for me and they were completely eradicated from my closet.

If the 'young' thing didn't convince me, mom used to flash me a picture either real or a mental one of the hideousness of the white pants to make me lose all interest in my current dotty craving. She's all kinds of crafty, my mom!

And it's mostly worked for the better part of my adulthood, until a couple of months ago when I came upon the little black and cream number featured in the set below. And, all my dormant polka-dotted fantasies roared back to life. I WANT it, I whined rebelliously though it was my own mental blocked self I had to convince!!!

I was good for a couple months, but couldn't stop thinking about it and in keeping with the theme of the regression of my fashion choices .... it's mine now. Yay! I love it, it's so much fun to wear, the scalloped hem looks adorable and the workmanship is excellent, the lining even has an edging of pretty cream-colored lace. I love thoughtful little details like that.

I styled it as shown in the set below (yes, the cardi has ruffles too but I think this is a more successful pairing than my poor chicken-pox pants), and cannot wait until it's warmer when I wont have to cover my arms or legs and will have cute sandals to pair it with. Will winter never leave?!!

Last night as I was taking an inventory of my closet, I spied a crazy pattern. Crazy because unusually for me, my closet is being slowly taken over by the color blue.

To understand why it's so crazy, you have to understand 15 years of trauma of the dreaded school uniform. Ours was worse than usual, the color being what I not-so-fondly termed as Detergent Blue. Detergent as in the color of all the detergents at the time - Surf, Rin, Robin blue. The primary school frock had the added attraction of being edged with the kind of lace you see on the elastic of cheap undies. Ladies, I'm sure you know what I mean. The school was quite anal about it too, no other lace was allowed.

In high school, the uniform changed to a pinafore (jumper) with tie and belt. In the ugly blue. I know you are thinking it doesnt sound half bad, but try imagining this outfit on a vertically challenged, festively plump, short-torsoed body. I've burned every school picture I could get my hands on and which my parents have not squirrelled away.

And the color used to fade quite spectacularly to a dull dish-water blue by the time the end of the year rolled around. So, you see my aversion to the color. It appears that it took another 15 years for the automatic 'no blue clothing' instinct to be wiped from my mind. And for me to be convinced there are other prettier shades of the color around. Recently, I even bought kurtis in various shades of the color, so the Indian wardrobe doesnt feel left out.

The outfit set below contains some of the clothes presently on my lust list. I own 3 of them already (can anyone guess which?) but the others will soon, soon, soon be mine!!!! Maybe not the colored tights. I love and am instantly attracted to them, but have yet to figure out how to work them into my outfits ....

Similarly, this year my list for shoes contains another banned-due-to-school trend, shoes with buckles. For the longest time, I avoided them because they reminded me of the dreaded Bata black shoes (similar here) which were mandatory. However, this year I find myself hopelessly attracted to and browsing only the mary jane styles. The set below are some of the ones I've been tempted by. I finally sprung for the black and purple trim pair below, I do hope they will look as cute as I think they are, otherwise back to no-buckles for me. Sadface.

And if you thought the blue lusting was limited to clothes, take a peek at the lovelies below.

I just thought it was funny that my fashion choices have taken such a childhood spiral - maybe it proves the fashion cycles bit, but I wonder if it's a deeply buried subconscious anti-ageing instinct. Oh well, this blog is not known for deep introspection (actually it's not known at all :) so we wont go there.

Anyways, what were your school uniforms like? Hideous, cute or not worth remembering?

I came across this movie Before the Rains while randomly browsing today. Santosh Sivan, Nandita Das, Rahul Bose, Jennifer Ehle, Bruce Wayne's dad (heh, dont know his name), Kerala in the 1930s .... it looks amazing!! Anyone seen this movie? It's going to the top of my watch list ... and how come it's out on DVD already and I hadn't even heard about it hmpf!

For the Austen fans I came across the writer Juliet Archer whose going to be writing a series of modern versions Austen in the 21st century. The Importance of Being Emma is already published and she's next working on a version of Persuasion. I've been on an Emma jag lately, just finished watching Clueless (lovelovelove this movie) so cannot wait to get my sticky Papaya hands on this book.

And finally, remember all the whining I was doing before - fall's here people! And since I just stumbled across this amazing site called Polyvore I played around (feeling a lot like Silverstone's Cher) to create an outfit from my closet - I picked up the ribbon-trim dress for $15 (original price $90) courtesy some coupons so currently it's the favorite item I possess, next to my impulse leather jacket buy and those 4 inch heels which are killer to wear but look so cute. I just know this outfit is going to get worn time and again this season ....

Yeesh .... no posts this month. I could say I was super-busy traveling and while it would be partly true the other reason is I have no writing ideas.

The weather gods have been dithering between summer and fall, so I've been going around wrongly dressed for almost every event- flowy, sleeveless dress and flip-flops on a miserably rainy day, completely covered for a sunny barbecue and so on. I guess it would help to check the weather every morning but that would require a more planned person than me. I wish fall would just get here already!!

I also bought a super-cute faux-leather jacket (similar to the one alongside though in a richer golden-brown color and prettier zipper detailing) in preparation for fall and I cannot wait to debut it. This was a total impulse buy, we were in a new town with some time to kill, spotted our favorite discounted designer store and ended with me buying the jacket and B with 2 pairs of shoes (just the fodder I needed the next time 'someone' points fingers at my shoe addiction :D) ...

Getting the new items to fit into our luggage was a challenge, since we already traveled with over-stuffed bags! I did find a new way of packing, apparently if you roll your clothes you can get a whole lot more stuffed into the same space. I did pity the customs guys if they happened to open those suitcases, items were apt to roll out every which way. Anyway, we got back with nothing missing so all's well on that front.

Anyways, so I decided I'd just do a round up of some events. The first was the food at the Minnesota State Fair- everything fried and preferably on a stick!

- deep-fried candy bar on a stick- -jumbo smoked turkey leg- -pork chop on a stick-

I've spent a lot of time scoffing at the deep fried chocolate thingy on the left but honestly, it's doughnut batter with melted chocolate in the center and sprinkled with sugar. What's not to love? The only sound I could make after eating this started with an m and ended with the same, I'm pretty surprised I actually had the fortitude to take the pic before I gobbled the rest up. The turkey leg was just plain scary!

The next was an end of summer barbecue. I made these delicious bacon-wrapped jalapenos in two batches; one as in the recipe and the other with a spot of honey in the jalapenos for the timid. I grilled them but next time I think I'll use the oven since our grill was very hot and it ended up charring the poor things. But, they were so much fun to eat and disappeared in a couple of minutes. I didn't get many nice pics though, so check out the original recipe to see some absolutely drool-worthy pics.

And lastly, due to the aforementioned writing slump there's been a decided lack of reviews. But, I did start reading a new author Nalini Singh's Psy-Changeling series and have been steam-rolling my way through them. I've read 2 books and the world is just so intriguing, detailed and complicated, I'm loving it. It's based in an alternate reality where there are three races - humans, changelings and the Psy and Ms. Singh goes into the details much more clearly than I can.

I started reading the author after picking up her new series Angels' Blood a few months ago, based in another alternate reality setting with vampires, angels and humans. Do pick both series up if you like paranormal reads, they're rich in world-building, the characters are fascinating and the books are well thought out and well-written.

However, this brings me to something that bugs me with romances and their covers , more specifically the tacky covers even the good books seem to end up with. If I hadn't been intrigued by the author's other series I would never have picked the Psy-Changeling series up solely based on the cover art. I know it's publishers who make the cover decisions so I wonder why they cannot understand that if people are embarrassed to be seen with the book cover they will not buy the book (i'm talking the impulse buys here). Atleast that's how it works in PapayaLand, I wonder if anyone feels differently?

Anyways, that's about all for this rambling post, how was your weekend folks?